


Rewind

by lachatblanche



Series: Dollhouse AU [6]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Consent Issues, Harm to Animals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachatblanche/pseuds/lachatblanche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles meets one of the university's benefactors. </p><p> </p><p>Takes place before all other parts of the Dollhouse AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Three years and six months ago,_

 

‘Welcome to the university, Mr. Shaw,’ Charles smiled his most charming smile, reaching forward to shake the man’s hand. ‘It truly is an honour to have you with us here today.’

The man in front of him – Sebastian Shaw, founder of the highly secretive (not to mention infamous) Shaw Foundation for Scientific Research – stepped forward, his smile even wider than the one that Charles was wearing. His eyes gleamed with an oddly exultant expression as he slid his hand across Charles’s palm.

‘Believe me,’ he said, a distinct purr in his voice as he clutched Charles’s hand intimately, ‘The pleasure, dear Professor, is _all_ mine.’ His gaze raked over Charles as he spoke, brazenly allowing his eyes to linger in a way that he had definitely not done when greeting the rest of the waiting academics.

Charles blinked. 

This, he thought blankly, was unexpected.

‘Oh – yes,’ he stammered out after an awkward moment, sneaking a glance around at the other members of the welcoming committee. They were all smiling pleasantly, either unconcerned or otherwise ignorant of Shaw’s oddly suggestive behaviour. Forcing himself to ignore the sudden uneasy feeling that trailed down his spine, Charles shook himself and continued. ‘Your generous donation came as a surprise to us all – a most welcome one, I must say – but a surprise nonetheless. May I ask what prompted you to make such a benevolent gesture, Mr. Shaw?’

‘Please,’ Shaw smiled, his shiny white teeth gleaming brightly, ‘call me Sebastian.’

Charles faltered, caught off-balance once more, but politeness dictated that he respond in kind.

‘Of course, Sebastian,’ he smiled politely. ‘And please – call me Charles.’

Shaw beamed.

‘I think I will,’ he murmured, his eyes glinting as he looked at Charles. It was only when Charles shifted uncomfortably that he pulled his eyes away. ‘And as for your question – well, the answer is that I have been following the university’s research into the human genome with a great deal of interest for quite some time now. It’s a fascinating branch of science, is it not?’

‘Absolutely,’ Charles responded eagerly, relieved to be back on even footing. ‘And we are progressing at a truly remarkable rate, knowledge-wise. We now know things that a mere two years ago would have been _unthinkable_.’ He could see one of the university’s chancellors nodding enthusiastically at him and making little gestures of encouragement behind Shaw’s back. Pasting on a pleasant smile to hide his grimace, Charles swallowed his pride and continued. ‘It’s the donations of generous benefactors such as _yourself_ , Mr. Shaw-’

‘Sebastian.’

‘- _Sebastian_ , that make such progress possible,’ Charles said as earnestly as he could manage. ‘The department’s budget _is_ remarkably generous, I should hasten to add, but one always feels rather constrained when having to take costs into account. Science should never be restricted by so small a thing as _money_ , I always say.’

‘I completely agree with you,’ Shaw looked almost ridiculously pleased at Charles’s words. ‘Progress should not be confined by other people’s petty little scruples,’ he said fervently. ‘Only think of what could be achieved if people put aside their financial and moral qualms and dared to think outside the box that society has confined them to!’

Charles’s brow furrowed.

‘Well, I don’t know if I would completely agree with that,’ he said dubiously, forgetting himself for a moment. ‘I mean, doing away with squabbles over funding would be one thing, but morals? No,’ he shook his head. ‘I think that having a good moral code and a strong sense of ethics is _necessary_ in a good scientist. To not have them … well, that would be rather disastrous for everyone, I think.’

Shaw was giving Charles an evaluating look, his gaze shrewd and considering.

There was a pause as the rest of the welcoming committee muttered in the background. 

Then Shaw let out a booming laugh.

‘You’re not afraid to make your opinions known, are you Charlie?’ he said happily, clapping Charles on the shoulder. ‘I like that!’

Charles grimaced. He _hated_ the name Charlie. 

‘Thank you,’ he said with a tight smile. ‘And it’s _Charles_.’

Shaw didn’t seem to have heard him though.

‘Come on then,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘I want to see what it is that my money paid for. Lead the way, Charlie!’

Charles opened him mouth to protest against the name once more, but then he caught the eye of the chancellor, who was furiously shaking his head, glaring at Charles meaningfully.

Charles closed his eyes and sighed. After a moment, he reluctantly opened them again.

_Charlie it is,_ he thought resignedly, before stretching his mouth into a smile and walking forward.


	2. Chapter 2

Charles got back home late that evening. He sank down into the comforting arms of his beloved sofa the moment the door was shut behind him, letting out a sigh of relief as he lifted his feet up onto the seat. The tour of the university grounds had taken a long time and the others, seeing that Shaw seemed to have taken a particular shine to Charles, had decided to step back and take a background role, leaving it to Charles to steer and direct the tour. This had the unfortunate side-effect of having Shaw’s eyes fixed to his every move for the entire day and while Charles was not unused to having appreciative eyes on him – quite the contrary, in fact – there was something about Shaw that was distinctly off-putting, unsettling in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

He shuddered. He’d had more than enough of the man after spending the entire day with him at the university. The last thing he needed to do was to bring Shaw home with him as well – literally _or_ figuratively. 

His plans to take a nice, relaxing bath and forget about Sebastian Shaw were thwarted, however, by the whirlwind entrance of his sister, Raven, who stalked into the room with a determined expression on her face and a look in her eyes that was often the precursor to Charles having to pull out both his cheque-book and his most convincing expression of sincere apology.

‘Well,’ Raven said haughtily, coming to an abrupt stop in front of him and giving him a thoroughly unimpressed once-over. ‘How did it go?’

Charles sighed. He had very much hoped to avoid any strenuous conversation until after he’d had a bath.

‘How did _what_ go, Raven?’ he asked wearily, mentally wincing when he realised that he had given Raven the opening that she had been waiting for.

‘Why, your _fraternisation with the enemy_ , of course!’ Raven shot back accusingly. She crossed her arms and looked into her brother’s face. ‘Well?’ she demanded when he didn’t immediately respond. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

Charles rolled his eyes and, sitting up, pushed his hair away from his forehead.

‘For the last time, Raven,’ he said patiently, ‘Sebastian Shaw is _not_ the enemy.’

This, of course, was the completely wrong thing to say to his passionate activist of a sister.

‘ _Not the enemy?_ ’ she repeated incredulously. ‘I can’t believe you! Charles – don’t you know what the Shaw Foundation _does_?’

‘Not entirely,’ Charles admitted, before narrowing his eyes. ‘But then again, neither do you.’

‘I know enough!’ Raven declared, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder. ‘I know that prior to creating the Shaw Foundation, Sebastian Shaw was suspected of having experimented on everything from bunny rabbits to gorillas, _and_ of having secretly paid out huge amounts of money to keep people silent about the fact that his labs were breaking about a hundred ethical and scientific guidelines a day!’

Charles frowned, reluctantly remembering the way that Shaw had so carelessly waved away the importance of ethical restrictions surrounding scientific experimentation just that morning.

Raven was still talking.

‘And as for the fact that we don’t know what the Shaw Foundation gets up to now? Well, that just makes it _way_ more suspicious in my book! Why would he keep everything so secret and hush-hush if he wasn’t up to no good?’

Charles rubbed at his forehead and wished for the hundredth time that Raven’s arguments wouldn’t sound so sensible.

‘Well,’ he said evenly, more in the interests of fairness than out of any real desire to rile her by disagreeing, ‘Competition, for one. A lot of these big industries are very protective of their work, and with good reason – you wouldn’t _believe_ some of the stories you hear about industrial espionage. But honestly, Raven,’ Charles said, ignoring the look of impatience on his sister’s face. ‘The man could be inventing a cure to _cancer_ , for all we know.’

Raven just gave him a look.

‘You met him,’ she said bluntly. ‘Do _you_ think that he’s the type to find the cure to cancer?’

Charles thought back to his time with Shaw and was unable to suppress a shudder.

Unfortunately, Raven saw this.

‘Ha!’ she exclaimed triumphantly, pointing a gleeful finger at him. ‘Ha, you think so too! I saw that, brother dearest, and you _cringed_. You think the guy’s as much of a creep as I do!’

Charles scowled.

‘Well,’ he sniffed, feeling slightly disgruntled, ‘That may be so, but _unlike_ you, I don’t plan to go storming his headquarters in the dead of night and then going and getting myself arrested just because I think the man is – and I quote – “a creep”.’

But Raven was smirking.

‘Oh please,’ she said breezily, throwing herself down into the chair opposite his. ‘You may as well admit that you don’t like him. Don’t worry, I wont hold it against you. The man’s a ruthless, murdering bastard, after all.’

Charles rolled his eyes.

‘Raven,’ he sighed. ‘You can’t just go around calling people _murderers_ , you know.’

‘But he _kills animals_ , Charles!’ Raven protested, her easy manner suddenly disappearing and being quickly replaced by seething outrage. ‘The bastard _uses_ them and _experiments_ on them and _kills_ them! How is that not murder?’

Charles was shaking his head.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said apologetically. ‘But legally, it’s only murder if it’s done to a human being.’ He responded to Raven’s look of disbelief with a shrug. ‘The law is the law, I’m afraid.’

Raven’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

‘Screw the law!’ she hissed. ‘It’s made by a bunch of greedy old bastards who spend their time looking down on people from their goddamn thrones in the sky and who care _nothing_ about the rest of the world! They can go fuck themselves, for all I care!’

‘Raven!’ Charles chided, rubbing ruefully at his forehead and dreading the headache that was sure to appear soon. ‘Please don’t swear, love, you know I hate it when you do. And it’s hardly the fault of the lawmen that Shaw hasn’t been convicted. There was never any proof about him, you know, nothing at all to tie him to any sort of animal experimentation or unsafe scientific procedures.’

‘That’s because the guy’s a fucking weasel,’ Raven snarled. ‘He destroyed half the evidence and paid people off to get rid of the rest. I know he’s guilty. I _know_ it. And I swear it, Charles, he’s doing something messed up in those labs. Something well and truly fucked up. I can feel it in my fucking bones.’

Charles shifted uneasily, unwilling to believe that even a man such as Sebastian Shaw would be capable of the things that Raven was intimating. Then remembered the man’s words and the horrible, greasy sensation of Shaw’s eyes on him, and he couldn’t help but shudder again.

‘I know that this will come as a shock to you,’ he said, with a rather forced laugh, ‘but I’m afraid that I can actually believe it. He didn’t seem very convinced by the idea that ethics have a place in a scientific laboratory. And he kept changing the subject whenever I brought up the idea of visiting his labs.’

Despite almost frothing at the mouth in hatred of Shaw, Raven softened at her brother’s admission. She smirked at his last sentence.

‘Maybe he just found you a deathly dull old fuddy-duddy, brother dearest, and wanted to get rid of you as quickly as possible,’ she teased.

Charles’s expression abruptly fell at that, and he let out a rather brittle laugh.

‘I seriously doubt it,’ he said dryly, not meeting her eyes, ‘Considering the way that he was mentally stripping me the whole way through …’ He shuddered again and found himself thinking longingly of the shower in the other room.

Raven’s head, however, snapped up at his words.

‘He _what_?’ she shrieked, her eyes widening even as her fists clenched in anger. ‘That sleazy _fuck_!’ She bolted up in her seat, her eyes flashing as she pinned her brother with her ferocious gaze. ‘I swear to god, Charles, you better not be thinking about sleeping with him, or I promise you, I will-’

‘Hush, darling,’ Charles soothed her, interrupting before she could go any further. ‘You’re worrying over nothing. There’s no way on earth that I am going to ever sleep with Sebastian Shaw, never fear.’

Raven’s ire subsided at that.

‘You sure?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘Only, it’s not as if you are the _fussiest_ person in the world when it comes to sleeping with people …’

‘Thanks for that,’ Charles said dryly, before shaking his head. ‘But no, don’t worry. I do have _some_ standards, you know, and I’m afraid that _Sebastian_ -’ he shuddered, ‘-doesn’t quite make the cut.’ He gave his sister a look. ‘Quite frankly, I would have to be completely out of my head to even _contemplate_ sleeping with him.’

Raven looked mollified at that and she settled back into her chair, closing her eyes as she did so.

‘I’m glad,’ she murmured. ‘I worry for you, you know.’

‘I know,’ Charles said softly.

‘And people like Shaw-’ Raven’s mouth tensed and when she opened her eyes, they were full of anger, ‘People like him need to be _stopped_ , they need to be _exposed_ so that the world can see them for who they really are!’

Charles could see that his sister was heading into dangerous territory, so he quickly tried to head her off as best he could.

‘Right you are,’ he said, sitting up in his chair, ‘but as I have now spent more than the fair share of my day focussing on Sebastian Shaw, I would very much like it if we could spend the rest of the night pretending that the man doesn’t exist.’ He threw Raven a sideways glance. ‘How about you order us some food while I go and take a quick shower, and then we can spend the rest of the night eating takeaway and watching trashy TV?’

Raven’s mouth twitched at that, and her face relaxed tentatively into the warm, sunny expression that Charles loved.

‘Oh, go on then,’ she said, rolling her eyes as Charles beamed at her, leaping up from his seat to press an enthusiastic kiss against her cheek. ‘But if you’re not out of the shower by the time it gets here, then I’m starting without you.’

‘Deal,’ Charles smiled, before eagerly bounding out of the room.

 

Raven watched him go for a moment, her expression fond. Her smile dimmed, however, when her brother went out of sight, and her eyes narrowed slightly. She bit her lip, chewing it anxiously as she mulled things over. When she finally straightened up, her expression was one of fierce determination.

‘Sorry, Charles,’ she muttered to herself, ‘but I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not.’ 

Then, with a nod to herself, she turned and headed for the telephone, pulling out a stack of takeaway menus as she did so.

 

Ten minutes later, Charles was out of the bath, feeling fresh and clean and happy.

Five minutes after that, the food arrived and they both settled down on the sofa together, faces turned towards the TV.

 

Seven days later, Raven disappeared.


End file.
